High Thermoelectric Powerfactor in Single and Few-Layer MoS$_2$

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that few-layer MoS$_2$ exhibits a high thermoelectric powerfactor at room temperature, leveraging 2D confinement effects to enhance thermoelectric performance, which is promising for energy conversion applications.

Contribution

The study reports a record-high thermoelectric powerfactor in 2D MoS$_2$, highlighting the role of electronic structure and confinement effects in thermoelectric enhancement.

Findings

Powerfactor of 8.5 mW/mK^2 achieved at room temperature.

High powerfactor results from 2D confinement and electronic structure tuning.

Potential for efficient thermoelectric energy conversion using 2D TMDCs.

Abstract

The quest for high-efficiency heat-to-electricity conversion has been one of the major driving forces towards renewable energy production for the future. Efficient thermoelectric devices require high voltage generation from a temperature gradient and a large electrical conductivity, while maintaining a low thermal conductivity. For a given thermal conductivity and temperature, the thermoelectric powerfactor is determined by the electronic structure of the material. Low dimensionality (1D and 2D) opens new routes to high powerfactor due to the unique density of states (DOS) of confined electrons and holes. 2D transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) semiconductors represent a new class of thermoelectric materials not only due to such confinement effects, but especially due to their large effective masses and valley degeneracies. Here we report a powerfactor of $MoS_2$ as large as $8.5 mWm^{-1}K^{-2}$ at room temperature, which is amongst the highest measured in traditional, gapped thermoelectric materials. To obtain these high powerfactors, we perform thermoelectric measurements on few-layer $MoS_2$ in the metallic regime, which allows us to access the 2D DOS near the conduction band edge and exploit the effect of 2D confinement on electron scattering rates, which result in a large Seebeck coefficient. The demonstrated high, electronically modulated powerfactor in 2D TMDCs holds promise for efficient thermoelectric energy conversion.